Hauntings of the Underground Railroad

Jane Simon Ammeson

Description

Before the Civil War, a network of secret routes and safe houses crisscrossed the Midwest to help African Americans travel north to escape slavery. Although many slaves were able to escape to the safety of Canada, others met untimely deaths on the treacherous journey—and some of these unfortunates still linger, unable to rest in peace. In Hauntings of the Underground Railroad: Ghosts of the Midwest, Jane Simon Ammeson investigates unforgettable and chilling tales of these restless ghosts that still walk the night. This unique collection includes true and gruesome stories, like the story of a lost toddler who wanders the woods near the Story Inn, eternally searching for the mother torn from him by slave hunters, or the tale of the Hannah House, where an overturned oil lamp sparked a fire that trapped slaves hiding in the basement and burned them alive. Brave visitors who visit the house, which is now a bed and breakfast, claim they can still hear voices moaning and crying from the basement. Ammeson also includes incredible true stories of daring escapes and close calls on the Underground Railroad. A fascinating and spine-tingling glimpse into our past, Hauntings of the Underground Railroad will keep you up all night.

Preface
1. Phantom of the Cellar
2. Spirits of the Waters
3. Sold Down the River: The Reverse Underground Railroad
4. Lincoln Walks at Midnight
5. Outwitting the Devil
6. Ghostly Overload
7. A Room with a Ghoul
8. John Hunt Morgan
9. The Last Trip Home
10. Hauntings Along Michigan's Underground Railroad Routes
11. The Conductor and the Slave: The Story of Levi Coffin and William Bush
12. Restless Spirits
13. There Should Be Ghosts!
Bibliography

Sujets

• Midwest
• Unexplained Phenomena
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Medio Oeste de Estados Unidos
• Ghosts
• Mensajería instantánea
• Body (disambiguation)
• State
• Midwestern United States
• Underground Railroad
• Slavery
• History of the Americas
• Supernatural
• Mystery
• Creepy
• Murder
• United States
• KS
• Local
• Ghost
• Chemin de fer clandestin
• Middle West
• IL
• ND
• IN
• NE
• True Story
• OH
• MN
• SD
• MO
• MI
• Death
• Slaves
• Paranormal

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780253031297
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

H AUNTING S
OF THE
UNDERGROUND
RAILROAD
H AUNTING S
OF THE
UNDERGROUND
RAILROAD
Ghosts of the Midwest
JANE SIMON AMMESON
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2017 by Jane Simon Ammeson
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03128-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-02982-9 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03129-7 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
CONTENTS
PREFACE
1
Phantom of the Cellar
2
Spirits of the Waters
3
Sold down the River: The Reverse Underground Railroad
4
Lincoln Walks at Midnight
5
Outwitting the Devil
6
Ghostly Overload
7
A Room with a Ghoul
8
John Hunt Morgan
9
The Last Trip Home
10
Michigan s Haunted Underground Railroad
11
The Conductor and the Slave: The Story of Levi Coffin and William Bush
12
Restless Spirits
13
There Should Be Ghosts!
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
PREFACE
A COLD DAMP fog descends as the whistle of a steam locomotive sounds off in the distance. Clocks and watches stop, making time stand still as the nine-car Lincoln Special emerges into sight. This isn t the original Lincoln funeral train that left Washington, D.C., on April 21, 1865, carrying the bodies of the 16th president and his 11-year-old son on a 1,654-mile journey, the reverse of the one Lincoln had taken from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C., in celebration of his election just four years earlier.
Instead, it s a ghost train, following the same schedule, arriving at each stop on the same day and time as on Lincoln s final journey. Want to see the Lincoln Special go by? Pick a former stop, preferably one where modern civilization seems far away, and wait. Funeral music and metal wheels on metal rails announce the arrival of the truly skeletal crew manning the engine house and stoking the fires as phantom Union soldiers continue, as they have for more than 150 years, to stand sentry over the coffin of their fallen president.
Just north of Indianapolis, in Westfield, a Union soldier walks the perimeter of the Anti-Slavery Friends Cemetery, stopping at a gravesite-that of a soldier slain in the last days of the war. Whose grave is he guarding? Is it that of a comrade gone too soon in battle? Or is it his own?

President Abraham Lincoln s hearse in Springfield, Illinois. On April 21, 1865, Lincoln s funeral train left Washington, D.C., on its 1,654-mile journey, traveling through 180 cities and 7 states, to Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln would be buried on May 4. But the president s burial wouldn t end the funeral train s travel. Each year the train, its mournful whistle sounding, journeys again along the same route, the casket still guarded by ghostly Union soldiers. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Before the Civil War, the Great Lake states had many trails to freedom for African Americans escaping slavery. It was a perilous journey, as slave hunters offering large bounties for the return of property pursued them, and laws made those who helped slaves subject to harsh fines, loss of property, and even imprisonment. But freedom overrode all concerns and slaves ran away, crossing into Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin on to Canada, where slavery was illegal; these concerns also didn t stop those helpers who believed in a higher cause than manmade laws-be it attributed to a higher being or their own conscience and sense of justice.

One of the most haunted Civil War cemeteries, the Confederate Stockade Cemetery is located on the three-hundred-acre Johnson s Island in Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio. A prison that housed approximately fifteen thousand Confederate soldiers was on Johnson s Island. The ghosts of many, including the two hundred buried there, engage in phantom battles and march along with the living during Memorial Day parades. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
In 1831, Tice Davids, a slave from Maysville, Kentucky, swam across the Ohio River to the free state of Ohio. His owner, following closely behind in a skiff, came ashore shortly after Davids did. But the slave had already disappeared and all those whom the slave owner questioned denied having seen Davids.
He must have gone on some underground road, the slave master said, and thus the Underground Railroad, or, for short, UGRR, came to mean the complex spiderlike system of trails African Americans followed as they made their way north.

Though they look like the ghostly remains of stunted trees, these structures are really chimneys for the rathskeller at McCourtie Park in Somerset, Michigan, a stop on the Underground Railroad. Photo courtesy of Jane Simon Ammeson.
Stationmasters oversaw the depots which were homes and businesses offering shelter, a place to rest and eat; stockholders contributed money and goods; and the conductors helped fugitives move from one station to the next.
Together these people were the counterforce to slave owners and the institution of slavery-men and women not interested in money but in justice. And what they achieved is legendary.
With two children dead and buried, the thought of her last remaining child being sold into slavery made Eliza Harris determined, no matter the danger, to make her way from Kentucky to Canada and freedom. And so, late one night, Harris bundled up her two-year-old daughter and crossed the winter landscape to the shores of the Ohio River.
Her plan was to walk across the frozen waters, but a thaw had turned the solid ice into chunks. When the weather didn t change and with her pursuers getting closer, Harris took the risk, wading into the freezing water, climbing on and off ice floes drifting along the wide river until she miraculously found her way to Indiana soil.

The former home of Nathaniel Hanson, owner of Alton Machine Shop Foundry and a fierce abolitionist, has passageways and rooms fifteen feet below street level, providing shelter for runaways. The building later became the Enos Sanitarium, and now, crowded with ghosts, it is the Enos Apartments, often included on tours of Haunted Alton. Photo courtesy of Alton Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Harris s journey was far from over. Because of the success of the Underground Railroad, the Fugitive Acts were broadened in 1850, and anyone assisting or helping hide fugitive slaves could be sent to prison and fined $1,000-almost $50,000 in today s currency. Slave hunters also were allowed to come north into free states and capture runaways; it was bounty hunting with huge financial rewards.
Luckily, Harris had come ashore in just the right spot-not far from the home of Quaker Levi Coffin, a successful merchant who had earned the nickname president of the Underground Railroad.
Levi and Catharine Coffin, who lived in southeastern Indiana, believed so fervently in the antislavery movement that they helped an estimated two thousand slaves escape. Now their home-a two-story, eight-room red-brick house built in 1839 in Fountain City near Richmond-is a national historic landmark and was named one of the top twenty-five historic sites by the History Channel.
From this house, Harris and her daughter made their way to Canada, where they prospered. Years later, she would see the Coffins, who were visiting Ontario, and thank them for all that they had done. Harris s ordeal was immortalized when Harriet Beecher Stowe, a staunch abolitionist, retold her story in her novel Uncle Tom s Cabin , keeping the name the same. Thus, the world learned the horrors of slavery and Harris s bravery.
Slave hunters were not only greedy and cruel but cunning as well. Violent men, they used violence to achieve their means, and so Underground Railroad conductors like Levi Coffin had to be even more cunning. Tricks of the trade for Coffin and other conductors included false-bottomed carriages, wagons with boxes for concealment, hidden rooms, underground tunnels, and signals used to let others know when there was danger and when it was safe to move. Coffin, well versed in the law, also used his legal knowledge to defeat slave owners in court. Along with many others, he used his own money to help runaways gain freedom.
The Underground Railroad business increased as time advanced and it was attended with heavy expenses which I could not have borne had not my affairs been prosperous, he wrote in his 1876 book Reminiscences of Levi Coffin .
But for all those like the Coffins, willing to risk everything, there were others in free states whose sympathies were definitely Southern. Some even ran a reverse UGRR where free blacks were kidnapped and forced into slavery with the use of falsified papers and owners deep in the South who did not care about such technicalities as whether a man was free or not. Slavery was even legal in Illinois for certain reasons. Though it was a free state, representatives, pandering to wealthy men who